BookMachine meets Jessica Kingsley Publishers in new event series

BookMachine has launched a series of events exploring the strategies of top publishing houses, starting with Jessica Kingsley Publishers (JKP).

Taking place on 30th May at Carmelite House from 6.30pm, speakers will include Sanphy Thomas, who joined JKP as managing director last October, and senior commissioning editor Andrew James.

Other panellists at the first “BookMachine meets…” event are editorial director Lisa Clark, marketing manager Sarah Plows, senior publicity and marketing executive Lily Bowden and special sales and rights assistant Pippa Adams.

JKP specialises in titles covering autism, mental health and gender diversity. In 2017 it joined the John Murray Press division of Hachette.

BookMachine co-founder Laura Summers explained: “This event series will offer our community of publishing professionals insight into how others manage their work - whether that be list strategy, marketing approaches or pitching their books. The goal of all our events is to help people to excel at their jobs. We think this event series will fill in some of the gaps - it will showcase areas of the industry which might not ordinarily get discussed and also highlighting how different departments work together." 
 
"It is a pleasure to kick-start this series with Jessica Kingsley Publishers, after they have achieved year-on-year revenue growth for the past 32 years. We can't wait to learn more about the keys to this success."

Plows added: “We’re really proud of what we do at JKP and often find that publishing colleagues are surprised at the range of books we publish and range of skills and channels used across different departments. We’re looking forward to sharing some of this with the audience.”

A second event with Bloomsbury at the publisher’s head office will be announced at a later date.